the first thing you notice about pepimk software's spybot search & destroy is the price: free.

spybot's user interface borrows from microsoft outlook's left-side "outlook bars." the excludes page shows an extensive list of spyware, key loggers, trojans, and so on, and here you can specify items you don't want removed. the tools page includes a number of utilities not found in any of the competition, such as a list of browser helper objects in your system (bhos are extensions to internet explorer, such as the google toolbar and commonname).

spybot is the only program here besides spysweeper to warn that removing adware may disable the ad-supported software it came with. spybot detected every spyware program we knew to be on the test systems and left behind few identifiable remnants. the key loggers and trojan horse were a different story: spybot's fair-size lists of such elements didn't include our key loggers (netobserve and winwhatwhere) or our trojan (netbus 1.7). spybot wasn't perfect at removal, either; for example, although the alexa toolbar was removed, it remained in ie's list of toolbars to display.

besides finding spyware, spybot can check for system problems (faulty uninstall information, broken links, and so on) and history lists that record information you may not want stored.

SpyBot Search & Destroy

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About the Author

Larry Seltzer has been writing software for and English about computers ever sincemuch to his own amazementhe graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983.
He was one of the authors of NPL and NPL-R, fourth-generation languages for microcomputers by the now-defunct DeskTop Software Corporation. (Larry is sad to find See Full Bio

SpyBot Search & Destroy

SpyBot Search & Destroy

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